Guest post by Linus Torvalds who has recently started blogging, writes about the new 2.6.27 release. The developer’s viewpoint on releases tend to be different from end users. Some interesting bits…
“The whole point of a release is that it should be something reasonably stable. Stable enough so that people can take that release and use it as a base for the stable tree, which in turn tends to be a base for most Linux distributions. It doesn’t have to be perfect (and obviously no release ever is), but it needs to be in reasonable shape.”
“So what makes a release anti-climactic is that from a development standpoint – at least as far as I’m concerned – it is inevitably at the end of a gradual slowing down of interest. So to me a release is not so much of a birth of a new kernel version, it’s more of a laying-to-rest of an old one. It’s also an end to a fairly quiet period.”
Could we have a link please?
http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/
could be interesting, this should at least allow more people to see the human side of a name and face they most likely only know from news reports.
The fascinating thing about Linus is, he manages a totally chaotic development model and obviously doesn’t even break out in a sweat doing so.
The idea of Linus having his own blog is probably good. He is a bit like a company CEO for a huge group of people that manage and code the Linux kernel. However, especially those who don’t constantly read Linux kernel news and discussions don’t often know much about the man and his thoughts.
The world has turned into this huge networked village where information and the Internet is very important in order to understand things and connect things together. If you are an important well-known person who are in the news all the time. it is useful if you yourself can have some say on your public image and on the rumors that there are flowing around in the Internet and elsewhere about yourself and your projects.
Also person in Linus’ position should have a place where public can read about him and his opinions, written by himself and not by others only who may sometimes overemphasize some sensational or other details and may misunderstand some things said by him.